NTEU: Schedule F Threat Greater than Advertised
The threat of Schedule F was broader than previously known and could have swept up more federal employees, according to the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU).
Schedule F was a Trump Administration effort to reclassify government employees into an at-will removal schedule, therefore making it easier to strip away their civil service protections. It was never fully enacted and was repealed by President Biden.
While the order purportedly targeted some 50,000 civil servants in policy positions, documents obtained by the NTEU via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request show the Trump Administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought was working to stretch the definition to cover most of the OMB workforce, including office managers, human resource specialists, administrative assistants, cybersecurity specialists and others.
OMB listed multiple reasons for including such employees, such as working on high-visibility correspondence and having access to top secret materials.
“Looking at the OMB list, they stretched the definition of confidential or policy positions to the point of absurdity under these broad definitions,” said NTEU national president Doreen Greenwald. “Under these broad definitions tens of thousands of frontline federal employees in every single agency potentially would be swept up, many of them GS-12 and below.”
Calls for Action
Democrats are pushing to codify civil service protections into law, with the looming possibility of Schedule F being resurrected in the next Republican Administration.
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) also published a draft rule to clarify and reinforce merit system principles and other worker protections for career, non-political feds.
Greenwald says the documents are a “wake-up call for those who think Schedule F isn’t that big of a deal or wouldn’t cause much damage.”
Former President Donald Trump pledged to reinstate Schedule F should he win the White House again.
